sharing

From iPads to desktop, apps have been adding SoundCloud integration. But this plug-in goes one better: you can navigate SoundCloud from an in-DAW browser, then drag and drop sounds to hosts like Ableton Live. (You can upload, too, also via drag-and-drop.) The plug-in is free for native hosts on Mac and Windows. One major criticism: without the ability to see SoundCloud’s licensing terms, you can’t be sure if the samples you’re grabbing are something someone wants you to use. Unless I’m missing something, it’d be great to have Creative Commons search support – indeed, it’d help people who do want …

For all you hear about the primacy of visual culture, you might not expect a Web service exclusively focused on sound to be a big hit. SoundCloud, however, has seen meteoric growth, hitting 10 million users in January. Its interface, however, hasn’t quite grown and matured at the same pace. We’ve seen a lovely-looking new HTML5-based player embed, but the main site hasn’t gotten the same refresh – until now. Yesterday evening, SoundCloud provided press and some members of the public with a first view of the new site. The facelift is organized around even greater focus on SoundCloud’s signature …

This collection of Instagram photos inspired an ambient compilation at the end of last year – one well worth adding to your listening queue now. Since then, challenges opened to a community on SoundCloud have produced hundreds of terrific tracks – and the latest weekly challenge is on now, with a deadline midnight Monday. Where do you get your ideas? Sometimes, it can be a challenge just to start a track, or can simply feel a bit, well, lonely. Finding fellow music makers can solve that. Artists gathering around SoundCloud and online ambient music chronicle Disquiet work together, with inspiration …

You’ve likely already seen it, but now that we’ve had some days to adjust and it’s rolled out to everyone, it’s worth noting that the new Vimeo is simply awesome. (It’s available to all, though you do have to opt in, which I recommend.) I don’t want to get carried away with fanboyism, but to me, Vimeo has become the content production, content distribution, and creative portfolio to beat – even as YouTube firmly entrenches itself as the “just go viral” platform for everybody else. While some other rivals have stumbled around trying a new formula, Vimeo has waited patiently …

You’ve likely already seen it, but now that we’ve had some days to adjust and it’s rolled out to everyone, it’s worth noting that the new Vimeo is simply awesome. (It’s available to all, though you do have to opt in, which I recommend.) I don’t want to get carried away with fanboyism, but to me, Vimeo has become the content production, content distribution, and creative portfolio to beat – even as YouTube firmly entrenches itself as the “just go viral” platform for everybody else. While some other rivals have stumbled around trying a new formula, Vimeo has waited patiently …

An example score produced with MuseScore’s new lead sheet features. Music notation software has long been seen as a two-horse race, a Pepsi versus Coke stand-off between Finale and Sibelius. But not only are there other alternatives, too, here’s one tool that’s making free and open source notation viable. I’ve spoken previously about engraving tool Lilypond, but it’s not entirely graphical, even with GUI front ends. MuseScore will look more familiar to users of something like Sibelius, and just as the latter released a major upgrade, it also had a big 1.1 release with major new enhancements. MuseScore has a …

From the intrepid grid-playing monome producers comes a whole bundle of goodness: a free album, and along with it, a nice video that illustrates what’s happening on some of the tracks, some reflections on how 15-second samples can bind together a community of music makers, and even, as a bonus, some tips on running Windows software in Linux under WINE. (Whew!) Via Joshua Saddler, who illustrates his music creation techniques in the video at top, we learn of the monome Community Remix Project album, available as a free download via Bandcamp. (Full track lineup embedded below.) MCRPv10: MCRP​-​RP, by monome …

Miro 4, an open source video player, has long been promising at least on paper as a means of sharing and watching open video. But the delivery in early versions was shaky, suffering from stability issues in some cases and simply failing to provide a compelling use case in others – particularly with browsers and other media players. Miro 4 is largely about music, but that in itself is relevant to video producers. If Miro can be a compelling iTunes alternative – particularly on the Mac, where such choices are few – it could be an intriguing distribution outlet for …

Miro 4, an open source video player, has long been promising at least on paper as a means of sharing and watching open video. But the delivery in early versions was shaky, suffering from stability issues in some cases and simply failing to provide a compelling use case in others – particularly with browsers and other media players. Miro 4 is largely about music, but that in itself is relevant to video producers. If Miro can be a compelling iTunes alternative – particularly on the Mac, where such choices are few – it could be an intriguing distribution outlet for …

SoundCloud for iPhone from SoundCloud on Vimeo. While it’s easy to focus on one platform or another, a profound trend in 2010 has been toward sharing media in the cloud. The basic concept is as old as the Internet, but from applications like Instamatic for photographers to syncing storage to tote around documents on iPads, this has been a year in which the server-shared media seemed to become a bigger part of our lives. Sound could be next. Aptly-named service SoundCloud has added a big, red “record” button both to an updated iPhone app and the Web browser-based dropbox. That …